The future of work in federal healthcare agencies

Unique HR challenges for federal healthcare agencies
As a human resources specialist, you’re being challenged like never before. In addition to meeting traditional demands such as quickly and efficiently attracting, hiring, and retaining quality employees, you’re also facing new challenges, including pressure to make your workforce more efficient, modernize employee processes, and work within ever-tightening budget parameters. As if that’s not enough, sudden and unexpected issues, like the Coronavirus that’s resulting in staff working from home, are constantly changing the future of work. 

Federal agencies like yours also face mandates to digitally transform the workforce while at the same time delivering enhanced employee experiences. The good news is that achieving these goals may be easier than you think. In fact, as your agency becomes more digitally enabled, a nice benefit is that this naturally improves experiences for staff and the customers, patients, and beneficiaries you serve.

Develop your workforce of the future
Your employees are the core of your agency. Yet even with a high-quality staff, you still need to continually attract and retain employees, especially those with in-demand skillsets, to develop your workforce of the future. Implementing digital processes can help with everything from identifying the right candidates to accelerating the onboarding process to streamlining and even eliminating repetitive tasks. 

This helps you and your staff spend less time waiting for paperwork and filling out redundant forms. As a result, employees such as clinicians are able to focus on what really matters—treating patients, soldiers, beneficiaries, and others who rely on your healthcare services. By shifting to a digital first strategy, your agency will be able to provide services faster and enable better outcomes. 

As you know, creating the future government workforce requires modern processes and having the right tools in place for all staff. Moving to a cloud-based digital platform that offers digital workflows, has interoperability to work with existing systems, and is able to access data in real time can help. This type of platform, as part of a digital transformation strategic plan, gives agencies and HR leaders the digital processes, intelligence, and insights needed to improve HR operations, performance, and experiences. 

According to IDC, a market research, analysis, and advisory firm specializing in information technology, government agencies anticipate savings and benefits from their digital transformation strategies. By next year, 40 percent expect increased or improved employee productivity, 33 percent expect reduced operational expenditures, and 27 percent expect business process cycle-time reductions. If your agency is not implementing a comprehensive plan for digitalization, then you’re behind other organizations and not achieving the savings and other advantages that those in both the public and private sectors are realizing.

Find out more about optimizing your digital workforce of the future, along with the challenges of a digital transformation, the three pillars of transformation success, and guidance to reach your goals, with this data sheet from IDC. 

Drive better employee experiences
A new HR and workforce productivity software category has recently emerged—the employee experience platform. The platform gives employees a single place to access a wide range of services. This category can include solutions such as the Now Platform® that’s uniquely positioned to help improve the prospect and employee experience for federal healthcare agencies. 

The Now Platform provides a single layer of engagement for HR functions. Employees benefit from access to multiple systems across the agency, empowering them to manage standard HR forms and functions through automated workflows. The platform also offers pre-built HR specific integration and functionality along with a self-service portal. HR departments that use the solution have seen their number of HR cases drop by 25 percent along with a 30 percent increase in efficiency in serving cases and a 37 percent increase in HR capability. 

Offering digital features such as self-service allows employees to access the information they need on their own with consistency, visibility, and relevancy. The result is improved employee experiences and satisfaction. 

According to research, employees are dealing with a proliferation of new technologies that can make their jobs more complicated. In fact, 27 percent of workers believe they waste an entire day a week on irrelevant emails and messages. Your employees want technology that simplifies their workday, not complicates it. 

With the right solution, you can give your employees the critical capabilities needed to improve in their jobs and have better experiences. A new paper on the employee experience platform market can help you navigate the HR and workplace technology landscape to find out which solution is right for your agency. 

© 2020 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of ServiceNow, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company names, product names, and logos may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.